Aim

Provide Christmas gift boxes for 2,000 children in disadvantaged families, encouraging financial resilience and budgeting through the year.

Who are we?

West Lothian Financial Inclusion Network is a small charity based in Whitburn, West Lothian. We support disadvantaged families and individuals in the small villages around the area, taking services to them rather than expecting them to travel to the main towns of Bathgate or Livingston. 

This became particularly crucial during lockdown. Families who had lost income through furlough or redundancy struggled to provide for their families, far less buy Christmas gifts for their children. Our staff and volunteers distributed nearly 18 tonnes of food packs and 6 tonnes of clothing (including school uniforms), made weekly support phone calls to people who were socially isolated and ran an online support group with elderly people who had never previously accessed the Internet. These services were regularly described as a “lifeline”.

Last Christmas, our Team North Pole project distributed 525 decorated shoe boxes containing Christmas gifts and essentials to families who had lost income through the pandemic, ensuring that children were still able to experience the joy of Christmas without putting additional pressure on the family finances. Many of the contents of the boxes are donated by major retailers, but we also include purchased items and gifts crafted by our volunteers.

These are some of the thanks we received from grateful families:

Hi guys I cannot say thank you enough. I’m overwhelmed with what I was given today. I’m still crying lol tears of joy lol thank you so much.

Oh that is absolutely wonderful. I really appreciate it! Thank you so much for helping me give my kids a happier Christmas.

There will be many happy wee faces when they open their boxes.

Thank you for getting a box ready for the wee girl of 5. She was delighted with it.

This year, we want to expand Team North Pole to help up to 2,000 children have a very happy Christmas in 2021! We will empower the families receiving the boxes and improve their financial resilience by circulating blogs and videos throughout the year with ideas on how to budget for Christmas and also produce printed budgeting booklets. We will encourage them to volunteer to help pack the boxes, make gifts and come up with their own ideas to make Christmas more affordable. 

We need your help to do this!

This Crowdfunder is to raise funds to help Team North Pole’s elves to:

• Buy additional items for the Christmas shoeboxes so that we can customise each box to the needs of an individual family
• Purchase materials for our volunteers to craft Christmas gifts for the boxes
• Produce printed budgeting booklets

Sample rewards

(Please note that each reward is unique, so we cannot guarantee any particular design)

This project successfully funded on 21st September 2021